Brooke came in and shut the door.

“I was looking for you.”

“You were?” His surprise was genuine. For eight months he’d been bringing patients into West Central. For eight months she’d been ignoring him.

“I wanted to tell you that your decision to underdose the morphine increased the odds in Harold’s favor. Thank you. And thank you for sticking around after the handoff. I think the way you kept him calm also kept him out of severe shock.”

She’d never spoken two complete sentences to him. Zach wasn’t sure what to make of it.

“Not a lot of people would have held a patient’s hand like that. Especially not a … well, I was going to say especially not a man, but that would be gender stereotyping, wouldn’t it?”

Gender stereotyping—did she have to speak like a sexy schoolteacher as well as look like one?

“Forget I said that. Job well done, whether you’re male or female.” Apparently done for the day, she started unbuttoning her white lab coat, starting with the button at her chest.

Damn, damn, damn. He was male, all right.

Texas Rescue: Rescuing hearts … one Texan at a time!

Following the Doctor’s Orders

Caro Carson

www.millsandboon.co.uk

Despite a no-nonsense background as a West Point graduate and US Army officer, CARO CARSON has always treasured the happily-ever-after of a good romance novel. Now Caro is delighted to be living her own happily-ever-after with her husband and two children in the great state of Florida, a location that has saved the coaster-loving theme-park fanatic a fortune on plane tickets.

MILLS & BOON

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For Katie, who was precious when she was four years old, and is even more precious now

Contents

Cover

Introduction

Title Page

About the Author

Dedication

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen

Chapter Sixteen

Chapter Seventeen

Chapter Eighteen

Chapter Nineteen

Extract

Copyright

Chapter One

She heard his voice before she saw him.

Through the constant hum of voices that formed the background noise of the emergency department at West Central Texas Hospital, his deep bass carried. Although he was a fireman by profession, his voice always made her think of cowboys. With its mild Texas drawl and the hint of a wink in the tone, his voice brought to mind a cowboy who’d come to town looking for beer and girls and a good time. He wasn’t a serious man.

She was a serious woman. Dr. Brooke Brown, emergency physician, could hardly be anything else. The buck stopped here—right here, at the pen in her hand. When she wrote a medical order, it was followed, and the results sat squarely on her shoulders. Whether the patient lived or died was her responsibility—medically, legally, morally.

It stood to reason, then, that she was the one female employee in the emergency department that didn’t get giggly-excited when the radio announced that the firefighters from Engine Thirty-Seven were bringing in another patient. Brooke had weightier things to think on than which team of Austin’s firefighters and paramedics had the most bachelors—or which had the bachelor with the sexiest voice.

But Engine Thirty-Seven did.

Brooke would never acknowledge such a thing out loud, but the two women standing at the nurses’ station weren’t so reserved.

“It’s gonna be a great shift,” one woman said. “The studs of Thirty-Seven are here to kick it off right.”

“It’s Eye Candy Wednesday.”

“Yesterday, you said it was Eye Candy Tuesday.”

“Every day that Thirty-Seven comes here is an eye candy day.”

Ignoring their light banter, Brooke continued to listen to the distinctive rumbling bass of one member of the Eye Candy Engine. Firefighter Zach Bishop was rattling off the patient’s basic information to the triage nurse, his voice coming from just behind Brooke and to her right—room three, she was sure—compound fracture of the tibia spoken in the same tone of voice as Mary Ellen, don’t break my heart and tell me that diamond means you’re engaged, darlin’.

Zach Bishop always conveyed the impression there was nothing to worry about. Nothing was unfixable or alarming. The patient could have confidence his injury was treatable. The nurse could flirt safely as she showed off her new engagement ring, knowing the firefighter with the movie-star looks didn’t truly expect her to betray her fiancé.

Dr. Brown, however, knew there was always something to worry about. Specifically, Brooke worried about the people of Austin who came to the emergency room of West Central with their complaints, big and small. She had confidence that she could handle the medical complaints—a professional confidence. Zach’s kind of confidence was personal—and masculine—and a distraction to the smooth operation of her department.

Was it any wonder that they’d spent nearly a year as something close to adversaries?

Adversaries wasn’t the right word. They worked together smoothly. He was a good paramedic, and his shameless appreciation of the female attention that was showered upon him always came second after the patient’s care. But as the handsome Mr. Bishop returned all the smiles that came his way, Brooke frowned in annoyance.

She couldn’t accuse him of trying to get attention. He’d just walk in, casually pushing a gurney, and the contrast between his sun-streaked short hair and his black uniform caught the eye. Whether he wore the black T-shirt of the fire department or the black button-down shirt of the ambulance corps he moonlighted with, the short sleeves of both uniforms revealed the defined muscles of his arms—biceps, triceps, carpi ulnaris.

After his first few visits, it had become obvious to Brooke that while the man didn’t seek feminine attention, he certainly didn’t discourage it. He wasn’t required to stop and chat with every woman who wanted to stop and chat with him, but he did.

Early in September, Brooke had leveled a look of disapproval his way as he was leaving the ER. He usually only raised a brow in an amused response to her glare, but that time, he’d leaned in just a bit too close to deliver the most ridiculous line she’d ever heard: If I had a nickel every time a woman as beautiful as you frowned at me, I’d have...five cents. Then he’d simply walked away, out through the sliding glass doors that led to the ambulances parked outside.

The next time he’d brought in a patient while Brooke was on duty, every woman in his vicinity had slowed her pace just enough to smile and be smiled at once more. Brooke must have frowned again, because he’d leaned in and quietly said, “Ten cents.”

She’d been ready that time. “I find it hard to believe you’ve only been frowned at twice in your life.”

“It’s not the frowns that are scarce. It’s that I never see women as beautiful as you are.” He’d had the audacity to wink as he’d left her standing alone at the nurses’ station.

And so it went. On the days she was working and Engine Thirty-Seven happened to bring a patient in, Zach would deliver a ridiculously corny line for her ears only. I finally placed your accent.

I don’t have an accent.

You must be from Tennessee, because you’re the only ten I see.

She’d either scowl or roll her eyes, because she was brunette and brainy and not the type that boys flirted with. Then they’d part company for hours or days or a week, however long it was before Engine Thirty-Seven again transported a patient to West Central during a shift that she and Bishop both happened to be working.

It was amazing, really, that they’d been carrying on this routine for the better part of a year, exchanging frowns for one-liners out of earshot of their coworkers. It was harder and harder not to smile each time; Brooke had a grudging respect for his unending supply of silly lines. Still, she didn’t like the way Engine Thirty-Seven’s arrival disrupted the concentration of her otherwise disciplined staff.

Case in point: the nurses in front of Brooke began debating whose turn it was to take this afternoon’s patient with the broken tibia. “It’s my turn to work with the hot fireman. You got the medevac guys last night.”

“Yeah, but their patient was critical. It wasn’t like they had time to stop and flirt.”

Brooke let their silliness slide past her as she finished dashing off her discharge orders for the patient she’d just seen. Like all doctors, she wrote quickly out of necessity, but she prided herself on slowing just enough when it came to numbers so that no pharmacist or nurse would misread the dose. Mistakes were unacceptable. Scribbling was irresponsible.

“But that man is delectable.” Both nurses sighed.

Yes, Zach was, in a strictly eye-candy kind of way, but Brooke had more important things to think about, and so did these nurses.

She handed the orders to one nurse. “Please discharge room two.” The nurse, blonde and single, wrinkled her nose in defeat as she left the nurses’ station.

Brooke nodded curtly at the other nurse. “Come to room three with me.”

Brooke had assigned the older, married nurse to work room three with her for reasons that had nothing to do with the firefighter. On a straightforward case like this fracture would probably be, an experienced nurse like Loretta could handle most of the care. Brooke would only have to see the patient twice—once to do the initial assessment and once to ensure whatever treatment she ordered had been completed. This freed Brooke for the cases where only an MD could perform the work. It was efficient.

“Radiology will be about twenty minutes,” Loretta said.

Brooke almost smiled. The nurse must have overheard Zach say the injury was a fracture, just as Brooke had, and she’d contacted radiology without being asked. Experience and efficiency were invaluable.

The nurse had known Brooke wouldn’t touch the injury without seeing an X-ray first. No doctor would. The X-ray was necessary to verify that no debris existed that might be driven deeper into the soft tissues of the injured leg while it was being set. A compound fracture, one with the bone protruding from the skin, could only be set temporarily, at any rate. The injury would undoubtedly require surgery within a few hours. That was a job for a different type of doctor, in a different part of West Central.

“Tetanus?” Nurse Loretta asked. “Whichever antibiotic is handy today?”

“Yes on both. Whatever cephalosporin is in the machine, if there are no allergies.”

Loretta had suggested exactly what Brooke would have ordered.

See? My decision was rational. It has nothing to do with keeping away from Zach Bishop a woman who is younger and single and more likely to appeal to him.

Brooke was not the type to be possessive when it came to a handsome face, a hard body or a deep cowboy voice. She tended to date men who were more bookish. Intellectually stimulating. Men she could engage in conversation without first needing to brace herself against the distraction of purely physical perfection.

Brooke paused outside room three and braced herself.

It did no good. As she walked in, her attention was caught by the most commanding presence in the room: his. It was human nature, she supposed, to notice who was dominant in every situation, and the tall man in the black firefighter’s T-shirt was definitely the most physically dominant man in the room.

Distraction over. Get to work.

Brooke was in charge once she entered a treatment room, so she focused on the elderly man on the gurney.

“Good afternoon. I’m Dr. Brown. You’re Harold Allman, is that correct?”

The man looked frail despite being heavyset. His white face and the stiff way he was holding himself meant he was in pain, but he still chuckled and looked up at Zach.

“Boy, times have changed,” he said conversationally, ignoring Brooke’s question. “Not only do we have lady doctors, but good-looking ones, too. This one’s a real looker.”

“That she is,” Zach said.

Brooke neither frowned nor smiled. She was accustomed to hearing this kind of tedious “lady doctor” comment from men of a certain generation. Beyond the patient’s bed, Loretta rolled her eyes and shook her head. Obviously, she was tired of the same old comments herself.

“Harold, how did you break your leg?” Brooke stepped forward to start the hands-on part of her exam, but Zach didn’t move out of her way as he normally would. At this point, with responsibility for the patient turned over from the paramedic to the hospital staff, he’d usually tell the patient goodbye and leave. But Harold, she realized, was clinging to Zach’s gloved hand with a white-knuckled grip at odds with his chuckle.

As Brooke pulled on her own latex gloves, she walked to the far side of the bed. Far be it from her to deny the old man comfort. If hanging on to a strong man like Zach gave Harold a little courage, that was fine with her.

Harold spoke with a noticeable hitch in his breath. “I’d like to tell you I did something that would impress you, young lady. I could’ve broken my leg sky diving. That would’ve been something, wouldn’t it? But the truth is, I just fell down my own porch stairs.”

“Were you dizzy before you fell?” Brooke asked.

“No, I’m just—I’m just turning into a clumsy old man.” He sounded sad.

“Nah, anyone can trip,” Zach said, and Brooke saw him give the old man’s hand a quick squeeze. “Happens to the best of us.”

“I’m going to look for other injuries. If anything is tender, let me know.” She checked Harold’s scalp, turned his head from side to side, pressed on his ribs and palpated his arm from shoulder to wrist. Judging by how tightly he gripped Zach’s hand, Harold’s other arm wasn’t injured, so Brooke decided to forgo that part of the exam.

She lifted one edge of the paper tent that was hiding the patient’s broken leg from his own view. The bone was protruding from the skin. Just seeing this type of injury could send patients into shock, so she kept the paper in place.

Pain also contributed to shock. Harold was being brave in his benignly chauvinistic way, but he was clearly suffering.

Brooke addressed Zach. “What have you given for pain, Mr. Bishop?”

“Morphine, two milligrams.”

She raised a brow at him. That dose was low. “Only once?”

Zach shrugged a bit. “Didn’t want to mask any chest pain.” His tone said it was no big deal, nothing to worry about.

“I see,” Brooke said, and she did. Zach suspected severe heart disease in this patient. A more potent dose of morphine could have meant the man would have a heart attack without feeling it. The attack would have to reach great severity before symptoms would be noticeable in a morphine-drugged, pain-free man.

The patient was already anxious and his body was under significant stress. Brooke knew Zach’s shrug and easy tone of voice were meant to keep the patient’s anxiety levels from skyrocketing. She envied Zach’s bedside manner.

“Nitroglycerin at the scene, Mr. Bishop?” Brooke could never match Zach’s life is good approach, but she did her part to keep the patient calm by continuing her methodical exam, palpating his undamaged leg as if she weren’t discussing a potentially life-threatening event with Zach.

Anticipating Brooke’s next order, Loretta opened a drawer and pulled out a pack of ECG leads, ready to place the little sticky circles on Harold’s chest so they could monitor his heart, although that wasn’t a typical part of treating a fracture. As if they’d choreographed it, Brooke moved to the foot of the bed as Loretta took her place.

While Loretta unbuttoned Harold’s shirt and attached the leads, Brooke pressed her fingertips to the ankle of Harold’s broken leg. She took his pulse without jostling the injury, needing to confirm that blood was still circulating past the fracture to reach his extremities.

The patient looked up at Zach and scolded him. “Now, don’t go embarrassing me in front of these pretty ladies. That chest pain comes and goes, I told you. I just take one of those tiny white pills, and I’m fine. Fit as a fiddle, except for my leg.” But his chuckle was forced and he rubbed at the center of his chest with his free hand.

No sooner had the nurse turned on the television-like monitor over the bed than Harold’s worried rubbing motion changed. He clutched at the open edge of his shirt. “Maybe...one of my pills?” he gasped.

Brooke read the jagged line of his ECG in a glance. A myocardial infarction—a heart attack—was underway. “I’m going to take good care of your heart, Harold. Let’s do something about that pain, too.”

From that moment, time slowed down and sped by simultaneously. It was always that way for Brooke while she led her team through an emergency. When she had to function at a high level of complex decision-making, everything seemed paradoxically simple.

At her word, the crash cart was called. Extra personnel filled the room. Decisions had to be made, one after the other, in a logical order. As a nurse tied a yellow disposable gown over Brooke’s white coat, Brooke called for the right drugs at the right doses. Once morphine had eased the panicked and pained patient into unconsciousness, she quickly dressed the broken leg as a stopgap measure before the cardiac cath team arrived to rush the patient to their artery-opening, lifesaving theater.

After the patient and his bed had been rolled away to the cardiology floor, there was a moment of silence, of inactivity. As if the bed were still there, no one walked through the empty center of the room as they snapped off their gloves and discarded protective gear.

Brooke was the first to use the sink as she scrubbed her hands for the millionth time that day, the smell of the soap and the sound of the water bringing her back from that intense state of mind. She thanked her team for their work, making eye contact and nodding at each person, the equivalent of a handshake in an environment where hygiene procedures made real handshakes problematic.

Zach was not in the room. Brooke had been so very alert through it all. How had she missed his exit?

The image of Harold clinging to Zach’s hand was vivid in Brooke’s mind. When Harold had lost consciousness, his hand had slipped from Zach’s. Brooke could remember thinking, Now Zach can administer the oxygen. Brooke had ordered him to do just that, and he had, of course.

When had he left the room? It was curious, how moments that were crystal-clear became hazy. As more and more of her regular team had entered the room, Zach must have stepped out, no longer needed and making room for those who were. He was a good paramedic that way.

He was a good paramedic in every way. Sharp and smart in matters of medicine. Comforting in his cocky way. Patients loved him. Her staff loved him. And Brooke—well, she needed to at least thank him as she had the others.

He was probably out by the nurses’ station, filling out his own paperwork. Brooke would go out there to dictate this patient’s chart. She’d ignore Zach, he’d ignore her and just before he left, he’d lean in, ready to murmur some outrageous line in her ear. But this time, she would speak first.

She would thank him for a job well done. Even if he did leave a disturbing wake of feminine fluttering everywhere he went, it was a pleasure to work with someone as good at his job as he was. After eight months of frowning at the man, it was time she thanked him for being part of the team.

It was professional courtesy. Nothing more—but he’d probably be so surprised, he’d forget to deliver whatever corny line he had ready.

The thought nearly made her smile.

Chapter Two

Zach scowled at the coffeepot, too damned frustrated with himself to wait for her in the hallway.

He’d transferred his patient, Harold Allman, to the care of the hospital. No cause for frustration there. The handoff had gone smoothly. It had been done in the nick of time, too. The poor guy had coded right there in the treatment room. Since a heart attack probably had been lingering on the horizon for months, Harold’s heart had chosen the best possible place to succumb to the inevitable. He was in good hands here, with Dr. Brooke Brown and the rest of the West Central team.

Zach should go now. There was nothing to wait for. No one to wait for.

Yet he couldn’t seem to make himself leave this emergency room, not without a chance to tease Dr. Brown first, and that was the problem. That was no laughing matter.

As a fireman and paramedic, Zach belonged out in the city of Austin, first on the scene, providing initial care. Or he belonged back at the firehouse, waiting for the next call. He belonged with his crew, Murphy and Chief, who were outside, under the portico that marked the ambulance entrance. Undoubtedly, they were sitting on the chrome running boards of Engine Thirty-Seven right now, shooting the breeze with other first responders as they waited for him.

Zach should be walking out those glass doors right this second. Instead, he was in the ER staff’s kitchenette, leaning against the counter, lingering against his better judgment.

Go. Just leave. You don’t need to see her one more time.

Her. Dr. Brown. He was waiting around for the chance to say what? One lousy sentence. That was all he ever said, one dumb line to see if she’d smile, but damn if he didn’t look forward to those stolen moments.

Dr. Brown had become something of a favorite with him, which was idiotic. She had a sharp mind and a beautiful face, true, but so did a lot of women in the world. Heck, so did a lot of women right here at West Central. Zach always enjoyed working with this hospital staff. Lighthearted conversation and playful smiles were a welcome break during an intense job.

He got neither from Dr. Brown. They weren’t her style, which meant she wasn’t his style. Zach pushed himself away from the kitchen counter that held the industrial coffee machine. His crew was waiting on him. He needed to get back to the engine. He’d catch Dr. Brown next time, see if he couldn’t make her smile.

The coffeepot was nearly empty, sitting on the burner, dangerously close to being boiled away entirely. Before he left, Zach could show some appreciation for the friendly folks at West Central. If there was one thing a fireman knew how to do, it was make a gallon of coffee. He opened the cabinets until he found the white paper filters, and made himself useful.

Go. You’re stalling. It could be another hour before she’s done with Harold. She’s hated you from day one, anyway.

Maybe she had, but he hadn’t felt the same. Hate was not how he’d describe that first impression. He and his crew had brought in a patient during shift change. She’d been leaving, he realized now, which was why she hadn’t been wearing her white doctor’s coat.

The patient hadn’t been critical. They’d been wheeling him in at a sedate walk, but even if they’d been coming in at a run, Zach would have noticed Dr. Brown. Her dark hair had been pulled back tightly, and she’d been wearing a crisp white button-down shirt and a pinstriped pencil skirt. She’d only lacked the black-framed eyeglasses to complete the look of a guy’s fantasy librarian or schoolteacher. Smart. Controlled. Sexy.

She hadn’t noticed him at all. As he and the crew had wheeled the patient in, she’d merely stepped aside, unimpressed and perhaps slightly bored, as if firemen surrounding a gurney were an everyday sight for her. He’d wondered who the sexy librarian was. Zach was used to crowds gathering to watch him work, not to being ignored.

Go. Quit hanging around for another glimpse. She didn’t notice you then; she ignores you now.

But he’d never really convinced himself that she hadn’t noticed him that first day. As he’d passed her, their eyes had met for the briefest second. Met and held just a moment longer than strangers do. When Zach had turned back for a second look, she’d been turning away to head out the door. There was something about that quick turn that made him suspect she’d been staring at him after all.

True, she ignored him now. It was a very aware kind of ignoring, however. She had to know exactly where he was in order to stand with her back to him. She had to intentionally remain silent when the nurses chatted with him as she wrote in her charts. And he would have sworn on more than one occasion that she’d deliberately stood in his path, making it easier for him to deliver one of his teasing pickup lines before he left the ER.

Those lines had become a private game between them. Harmless. Fun. And challenging, especially now that he’d made her lips quirk in an unwilling smile more than once.

It’s fun to try to make Brooke Brown smile, but it’s fun to make every beautiful woman smile. No difference.

The grapevine had said she was seeing someone at this hospital when he’d first laid eyes on her last September. He’d been dating a nurse at a different hospital. Their game had started off innocently enough, just verbal sparring. It had never gone further. Heck, they never dropped the professional courtesy of addressing each other as Dr. Brown and Mr. Bishop.

Through the fall and winter and spring, nothing had changed, although the grapevine now said Dr. Brown was no longer seeing anyone in particular. Of course, Zach and the nurse at the other hospital had parted ways long ago. He always ended a relationship while things were still friendly, before any drama could develop.

This long-standing flirtation with the sexy librarian-teacher-doctor at West Central wasn’t any kind of relationship, so it was completely drama-free. In other words, it was safe. Zach didn’t want an emotional relationship, and Brooke Brown, MD, was no threat in that sense. They didn’t care for one another beyond their running joke.

Go, then. This isn’t the way you play the game. You crack a joke if she happens to be on duty, and then you leave. Why are you sticking around now?

He wasn’t. He was leaving. As soon as the coffee was ready, he’d pour himself a cup and get the hell out of Dodge, before he did something stupid and tried to take this non-relationship to the next level.

He thought about her too much. With their first call of the day, Engine Thirty-Seven had been directed to another hospital, and Zach had been disappointed to lose the chance to see Dr. Brown. To tease her. To try to make her smile.

That was a red flag in his book. Zach loved women, and women loved him. But to start thinking exclusively about one woman, to be obsessed with one woman?

Been there, done that, never doing it again.

The steady drip of the brewing coffee built momentum, filling the carafe. He just needed a few more minutes.

When dispatch had directed Engine Thirty-Seven to take Harold Allman to West Central, Zach had felt a little extra adrenaline rush: Dr. Brown could be on duty.

Red flag.

Yeah, yeah. The coffee’s still brewing. I’ll be out of here in a few minutes.

When it came to Dr. Brown, he always seemed to linger a few more minutes. As she’d handled Harold’s code, Zach should have left the room. He should have gotten out of the way immediately. Instead, he’d stood at that door and watched her for a minute longer. Then for five minutes longer.

Watching Dr. Brown’s cool concentration had stirred something in him, something more than physical attraction. He was impressed with her. He’d almost felt proud of her.

And yes, her abilities as an emergency physician made her even sexier, damn it. He’d thought she was sexy the first time they’d locked gazes last September. Now it was April, and the problem wasn’t just that he found her sexy. The problem was, every other woman no longer seemed as sexy to him.

Hell, if enough red flags aren’t waving for you, then you might as well stick around and make a fool of yourself over a woman for a second time in your life. Fall in love, get down on bended knee. I’m sure rejection won’t hurt as badly the second time. Stay and enjoy that pain again.

To hell with the coffee. He was leaving.

Zach grabbed the doorknob and pulled.

Dr. Brown was on the other side, holding that side’s knob. The force with which Zach pulled the door toward himself pulled her into the room as well.

“Oh,” she said, looking up at him in surprise. She only looked up a few inches. Although he was tall, she was, too, and she always wore heels with those pinstripe skirts under her white coat.

They stood there, each holding their side’s doorknob for a long, mute second. Zach let go and stepped back.

She came in and shut the door. “I was looking for you.”

His surprise was genuine. For eight months, he’d been bringing patients into West Central. For eight months, she’d been ignoring him.

“I wanted to tell you that your decision to under-dose the morphine increased the odds in Harold Allman’s favor. Thank you. And thank you for sticking around after the handoff. I think the way you kept him calm also kept him out of severe shock.”

Dr. Brown had never spoken two complete sentences to him. Zach wasn’t sure what to make of it. She wasn’t flirting, not like other women did. She was just talking to him. He crossed his arms over his chest.

Her gaze held his as she spoke. She didn’t come close to batting her eyelashes, not one flutter, but he noticed how thick they were, anyway.

“Not a lot of people would have held a patient’s hand like that,” she said. “Especially a... Well, I was going to say especially a man wouldn’t hold hands, but that would be gender stereotyping, wouldn’t it?”

Gender stereotyping. Did she have to speak like a sexy librarian as well as look like one?

“Forget I said that,” she said. “It was a job well done, whether you’re male or female.”

Apparently done for the day, she began unbuttoning her white lab coat, starting with the button at her chest.

Damn, damn, damn. He was definitely male.

Through the kitchen was an even tinier room, one that held a cot and a few metal lockers. It was the physician’s lounge, in theory. In reality, it was just where the doctors stashed their belongings. Dr. Brown stepped toward the lounge door, unbuttoning as she walked.

There was no way Zach was going to leave while an attractive woman was removing clothing. He leaned back against the counter.

Since he couldn’t just stare at her, he kept the conversation going. “I denied the patient adequate pain relief, so it seemed like the least I could do was let him squeeze the hell out of my hand. I’d be lying if I said it didn’t hurt. The old guy could grip as hard as a female patient I had last year. She was in labor, and she nearly broke my hand with every contraction.” He paused and grinned at her. “But if that sounds like gender stereotyping, forget I said that.”

And then it happened. What the corniest pickup lines or the cleverest zingers couldn’t accomplish, a simple conversation could: Brooke Brown smiled. She laughed, actually. Laughed as she shrugged off her white coat and let it drop down her arms.

Go. Leave now, before you fall too hard.

He couldn’t just turn tail and run. That wasn’t how they played their game. It would look odd. He needed to spar with her. Keep things normal.

But he stayed silent, mesmerized by a Brooke Brown who was neither focusing on medical care nor glaring at him while the rest of her staff flirted with him. She reached behind the door for a hanger, a woman doing a common task that shouldn’t have been so fascinating. He didn’t look away as she hung up her white coat.

“I’m glad I’m done for the day,” she said, as she stepped into the tiny room and opened one of the metal gym lockers. “Are you done, too?”

She was making small talk, completely unaffected by this change in their routine. Still, he didn’t take his eyes off her, not even to glance at the wall clock. By the time they drove the engine back to the firehouse, it would be seven o’clock and the end of his twenty-four hour shift.

“Yeah, I’m done, too.”

He needed to stick to his plan. Coffee to go. Head for the engine after delivering the line she expected, if he could remember the over-the-top line he’d planned.

He could not. As he picked up the full coffeepot, he thought of the oldest line in the book, instead. He raised the pot in one hand and the cup in the other. “Can I buy you a drink?”

She froze in place. Her back was to him, and since he was watching her every move, he saw her hesitation. He watched her fingertips as she raised her hand to the back of her neck and fumbled for her stethoscope. She pulled a square purse out of her metal locker, keeping her back to him, her head a little bowed. “I don’t think that would be a good idea. We’re not coworkers per se, but we do work together at least a couple of times a week, and...”

Her voice trailed off as she turned around and saw him holding up the coffeepot and the cup in the gesture that had accompanied Can I buy you a drink?

“Oh, it was a joke,” she said, and he felt every bit of her mortification. Her gaze dropped to the floor, and the cool and commanding physician looked for all the world like an embarrassed young girl, standing in front of gym lockers like an awkward teenager.

“My mistake,” she murmured.

He could leave it like that, with her feeling embarrassed, and their relationship unchanged.

But she deserved better, this smart and sexy woman who hadn’t seemed to like him much until today. The truth was, he’d said the line in a different manner than he usually did. Not so tongue-in-cheek. Not laughing as he spoke.

“It wasn’t a joke, Brooke. Can I buy you a drink?”

Chapter Three

She was such a fool.

Can I buy you a drink?

He’d said it in that delicious deep voice, but without that good-time cowboy tone. For once, he’d sounded serious.

Still, he’d meant it as a joke. It was always a joke, it had been a joke from the very first, and Brooke was an idiot for having forgotten that for even the briefest of moments.

The stethoscope dangled from her hand. Buying herself a moment, she tucked it into her purse.

Why had she imagined a guy like Zach would have been serious for even a moment? He’d called her by her first name for the first time she could remember, and it made her want to blush like he’d whispered some intimacy in her ear. Maybe that had made her hear something more than he’d meant.

He was only eye candy. A ladies’ man. A fun-loving cowboy, for goodness’ sake.

And she was an emergency medicine professional. She could operate under duress. She’d been trained to keep moving forward, even after a blunder.

She moved forward now, literally, to toss her purse on the counter and take the empty coffee cup from his hand. “Sure, I’ll take a drink. Thanks for pouring.”

His smile seemed to come as easily as ever, but the look in his eyes pinned her in place. “Am I supposed to politely assume that’s a no and drop the subject?”

“It’s a yes. I’d like a drink.” She wiggled the white cardboard cup impatiently.

He covered her hand with his before he began to pour the steaming hot liquid, holding her cup steady with the same hand that had kept poor Harold steady. His palm was warm. His hand was large enough to wrap around both her hand and the cup easily.

Unlike Harold, she didn’t find the touch of his hand calming. She’d been this close to Zach before, but only in passing, for a whisper of silliness—I’m having a hard time finding my way out of this building because I keep getting lost in your eyes—and then he’d be gone and she’d be left alone with a pleasant little shiver of awareness.

He didn’t leave this time. He was still here, still touching her, and she had nowhere to look except at him. His eyes were blue-green and as focused on her as she was on him.

“I expected more from you.” He let go of her hand and put the coffeepot back on the burner.

“More what?” she asked.

“I expected a straightforward yes or no from a woman like you. Can I take you out for a drink after work?”

His casual stance and the trace of his ever-present grin sent all the usual messages: nothing to worry about, no reason to be alarmed. But the look in those blue-green eyes was different.

This wasn’t a game. She was so terribly aware of the height and breadth of him, so much masculinity in a firefighter’s shirt. Oh, it had been a long, long time since pheromones and hormones had threatened her ability to think clearly.

“Why the hesitation? You make a thousand decisions every shift, Brooklyn.”

“It’s just Brooke.” No one here called her Brooklyn. “How did you know my real name?”

“It’s on your license.”

Paper copies of all the physicians’ licenses were displayed on the wall. She was willing to bet no one else had read them in ages. “It’s a frivolous name. I prefer Brooke.”

“It’s a sexy name. Brooklyn Brown. It fits you.”

That deep voice of his was always appealing, but the way he used it now, saying her name as if it were something he could taste...

Oh, no.

She set the coffee cup on the counter.

No, no, no. She was not going to turn into a mush-for-brains puddle of female hormones at the feet of a fireman who said she was sexy.

“I could pick you up in an hour. Are we on?”

Brooke needed to say no. She knew it. Instead, she kept looking at the single most handsome man to ever ask her on a date, and...kept looking. Silent, not moving forward, not functioning at all. Mush for brains.

The door opened again. “There you are. Done for the day?”

That particular voice belonged to Dr. Tom Bamber, a radiologist at the hospital. He was a welcome distraction at the moment, forcing Brooke to stop staring at Zach as she turned to greet Tom. She only had a second to wonder why the radiologist had come to the emergency department before he said, “I was looking for you.”

“You were?” Her surprise was genuine. He must have an unusual report for her. Radiologists typically gave their reports over the phone from their dark cave in the hospital basement, not in person. Harold Allman and his fractured tibia had been taken to the cardiac cath lab instead of X-ray, anyway. Dr. Bamber hadn’t been on duty earlier, and—

“I’ve got tickets to the ballet tonight. Orchestra, row E.” He flourished them before her like a two-feathered fan. “Score.”

Score, indeed. Brooke loved the ballet, beauty created from precision. It was sweet of Tom to remember, but—

Tom kept talking. “I have my doubts that a young troupe can truly do justice to Balanchine, but we might as well go and judge their attempt. Shall we say seven? We can dine with the Philistines at the food trucks outside the theater.” Tom stepped just a little too close to her. “Then I’ll buy you a drink after the show.”

Good grief, the man was asking her out on a date. Brooke rarely went out with friends and even more rarely on dates, but now she had two men wanting to buy her drinks. On the same night. At the same moment. Asking in front of one another.

She stole a glance at Zach, to whose presence Tom seemed to be oblivious. Zach raised her coffee cup to his lips, watching her conversation like a man watching a sporting event. He blew across the top of the hot liquid, which made his mouth look like he was about to give someone a soft, sweet kiss.

No, no, no. Don’t go there.

Brooke smiled politely at Tom. His lips looked unremarkable. His mouth wasn’t about to do anything except question her.

Normal lips were a good thing. Tom was exactly the sort of man she should date. They spoke the same language as doctors. They’d discussed their mutual appreciation of the ballet once, over lunch in the hospital cafeteria. They were evenly matched, even in their height. She could look him squarely in the eye.

Brooke had to glance up at the fireman who’d also just asked her out for a drink. She wondered what kind of place a man like Zach would take a woman like her. What was a playboy paramedic’s idea of a night out in Austin? Where would it begin—and where would they end up?

No, no, no.

Zach was all wrong for her, yet she couldn’t accept Tom’s ballet invitation in front of Zach. She felt a little relieved, actually, that she had an excuse not to go out on a perfectly nice date with a perfectly nice man like Tom.

Likewise, even if she’d wanted to, she couldn’t tell Zach yes in front of Tom.

Even if she’d wanted to?

She had wanted to. She’d almost said yes to a fireman just because he dripped sex appeal. Tom had unknowingly stopped her from making a big mistake.

“I’m sorry, but—”

The kitchen door burst open once again.

“There you are.”

Brooke felt relieved; this man was almost as handsome as Zach, but also quite happily married. The head of the emergency department, Dr. Jamie MacDowell, wasn’t going to offer to buy her a drink.

“Can you work late?” Jamie asked her instead. “We just got a call that there’s been a multi-car accident on I-35.”

“Sure, I can stay.” Brooke recognized the cowardly relief she felt. Now she didn’t have to turn down two men.

Jamie nodded at Zach as if they were old friends. “Surprised your engine hasn’t been called yet.”

An obnoxiously loud series of three tones sounded from the radio at Zach’s hip.

“Now it has.” Zach silenced his radio as he started for the door.

“Jinxed you,” Jamie said. As Zach passed him, the two men didn’t shake hands as much as do some kind of forearm-to-forearm punch. Brooke had seen that move before. It seemed that all three of the Dr. MacDowell brothers and half the emergency responders in the Texas Rescue and Relief organization had played on the same high school football team.

She should have guessed that Zach’s cocky grin and his confidence with women had started in his teen years. Of course, Zach Bishop had been a high school football star.

As he turned back to her, he added a wink to the grin that had probably slayed a dozen cheerleaders. “Looks like neither one of our shifts is over. Tonight is not our night, but the offer still stands.”

Then he left. Tom Bamber frowned at her. Jamie MacDowell lifted one brow in speculation.

Brooke turned her back on both men and grabbed her white coat off its hanger. It was time to go to work. Zach was gone, and she was once more left alone with a little thrill of awareness, same as always.

The offer still stands.

Or maybe, things weren’t the same as always.

* * *

An hour later, Brooke was making decisions in that quick yet methodical state of mind, going down the logical checklists ingrained in her brain regarding the injuries and complications of accident victims. She had no time to wonder where Zach was.

She wondered, anyway, during those moments when she transitioned from one patient to another. She’d worked a hundred shifts not caring who pushed the gurney as patients arrived. She’d worked a hundred more without replaying the last words a man had said to her. Yet tonight, she kept remembering the way Zach had said Brooklyn Brown. The way he’d told her the offer still stood.

Each time she walked into a treatment room, she noticed that Zach wasn’t there. Each time the sliding glass doors opened and paramedics wheeled in a patient, she noticed that Zach wasn’t there. When Loretta stopped to let her know that Harold Allman was doing well after his heart procedure, Brooke made a mental note to be sure to pass on the good news to Zach—later, because he wasn’t there.

Still, Harold’s recovery was a useful thing to have ready to discuss, because she wasn’t sure what else she would say the next time she saw Zach. Whenever that would be.

It wasn’t that day. When she took her purse out of the gym locker for the second time, it was after midnight, and she was so tired, the cot in the physician’s lounge was starting to look inviting. She wondered if Zach felt the same, wherever he was.

No fire engines had arrived from the crash scene. Fire engines didn’t transport patients; ambulances did. But if a fire engine was first on the scene and its paramedic was the first to begin a victim’s medical treatment, then that paramedic would stay with the patient, continuing medical care in the back of the ambulance on the way to the hospital. The fire engine followed the ambulance, staying with its paramedic, ready for him to rejoin the engine’s crew once the handoff to the hospital had taken place.

Any time an ambulance pulled up to the hospital doors and Zach Bishop emerged with a patient, that big red Engine Thirty-Seven pulled in right behind him, like Zach was some kind of superhero with a red fire truck instead of a red cape sailing behind him.

Not tonight. Brooke assumed that meant Zach was working as less of a paramedic and more of a firefighter. Was he still on the scene, putting out a fire or cutting open a crumpled car? Or was he, like she, dragging himself home, staying awake through sheer willpower long enough to take a shower and then falling into bed with hair still wet, sleeping like the dead until it was time to wake for the next shift?

As Brooke’s own wet head hit her pillow, her last thought of the day was a vision of Zach, his hair dark and damp from a shower, smiling at her from the empty white pillow next to hers.

Shall I call you for breakfast, or just nudge you?

Brooke didn’t swoon for superheroes. She didn’t date eye candy.

But if she wanted to, she could, because the offer still stood.

In the last unguarded moment of a long day, Brooke fell asleep with a smile on her lips.

Chapter Four

She heard him before she saw him. Tom Bamber’s voice was as distinctive as Zach Bishop’s, but not in a sexy way. He sounded more like—well, he sounded like a radiologist giving a report, which he was.

He wasn’t giving the report to Brooke. He was speaking to Jamie. It was odd that Tom had emerged from his basement office and walked to the emergency room instead of just picking up the phone.

She had a hunch that he’d done so in order to see her. Brooke considered sneaking past the nurses’ station to the kitchen in order to avoid Tom. If he was planning on asking her out again, discretion would be the better part of valor.

Okay, she was feeling cowardly. She didn’t want to face the awkwardness of an offer she didn’t want but shouldn’t refuse. She started down the hall with careful steps, trying to minimize the sound of her heels on the tile.

Tom was exactly the kind of guy she ought to date. Her mother would approve. Nothing could be safer and more secure than a radiologist. Mom was big into security. Predictability.

Imagine taking firefighter Zach home to meet Mother.

First, the man would have to be crazy about her to want to set foot in the mausoleum that was her mother’s house. Second, although women loved Zach, her mother would be the exception. Even Zach couldn’t charm her from her permanent frown.

But what if he could? That would really be something.

“Overactive imagination in room two.”

Brooke stopped in midstep and turned to face the nurse. Loretta might as well have been diagnosing her as the next patient.

“Sorry, Dr. Brown. Did I startle you?”

“No, not at all.”

Was she blushing? She couldn’t be. Dr. Brooke Brown did not blush. She also did not daydream about firemen who were so madly in love with her that they wanted to even meet her mother. Where was her logic, her order, her checklists? First, long before the man was crazy in love with her, she’d have to actually see the man again, maybe even call him by his first name.

First, the man would have to make an effort to see me.

It had been three days since he’d said the offer still stood and then left for the accident scene. Zach didn’t have her phone number. He didn’t know where she lived. He was leaving it up to chance for their paths to cross, as always. They would both have to just happen to be ending shifts at the same time for that after-work drink to become reality.

In other words, he was an easy-go-lucky, flirtatious guy, and she was an idiot for mistaking his casual invitation for anything more. Had she really thought their relationship was going to move to another level? She was a fool for daydreaming that a handsome playboy was anything but a handsome playboy.

Loretta handed her the clipboard for room two. “Four-year-old female, two hovering parents who brought their own thermometer.”

Well, there was nothing like work to wake Brooke up from her daydreams. “Fever?”

“Barely one hundred degrees, the third time they asked me to verify their thermometer’s readings with our thermometer. Runny nose. They printed out a list from their internet search. Could be the first signs of a cancerous tumor, you know.”

“First things first. We’ll have to consider the common cold.”

“Good luck. Those parents are already in a temper because the urgent cases were seen first. They got here at six-thirty this morning, because their regular pediatrician’s office didn’t open until eight. It’s nine now, so...you get the picture.”

Twenty minutes later, Brooke was in a temper herself. She understood anxious parents—she’d been raised by one—so Brooke had been very thorough in her exam of the child. There was no indication whatsoever of anything more serious than the common cold in the little girl. Nothing in her medical history, nothing in her family history, nothing to warrant even a basic antibiotic prescription.

Brooke had explained her reasoning. She’d answered every question the parents had. But when the parents had questioned her qualifications as a physician, when the accusations had started flying that Brooke must be unduly influenced by insurance companies, drug companies or hospital profits, her own patience had run out.

They’d asked to see another doctor.

Jamie MacDowell was in there now. Brooke stood at the nurses’ station, empty-handed, denied even the patient chart that she could have slapped onto the counter in a satisfying smack.

She knew Jamie’s conclusion was going to be identical to hers. Jamie would back her up in every way. It was all such a waste of effort. The parents would leave, and the next time they feared that their daughter was seriously ill, they’d go to a different hospital’s emergency room. All of Brooke’s careful explanations, all of Jamie’s professional courtesy, would result in nothing. West Central Texas Hospital was wasting resources that could have been better spent on a dozen other people.

Worse, those parents would never relax and appreciate that they had a healthy child. Brooke couldn’t help but think of her mother and how grateful she would have been to have a four-year-old girl with a common cold. Instead, when Brooke’s sister had been four, her mother had spent a week sitting at the bedside of a child in a coma, until Brooke’s sister had passed away.

It had been so long ago, close to twenty years now. Brooke rested her elbows on the high counter of the nurses’ station and let her head drop into her hands. For just a moment, she pressed her fingertips against her temples to relieve the stress. It was impossible to treat a four-year-old little girl and not think of her sister.

If those angry parents in room two only knew how much worse their lives could be, how much more serious their troubles could get. People should thank their lucky stars when their lives were normal. Boring. Routine. Brooke’s mother was right: security and predictability were the keys to a good life.

“Dr. Bamber asked that you give him a call when you have a moment,” the nurse at the desk said.

Brooke frowned. She wasn’t waiting on any radiology reports. “About which patient?”

The nurse, the blonde and single one from a few nights ago, beamed at her. “No patient. I think it’s personal.”

So, Tom was going to ask her out again, and he wasn’t waiting until chance brought them together to do it. He was predictable. He was exactly what she needed in her life, if she needed any male companionship at all.

The glass doors slid open. A patient arrived on a gurney, paramedics walking on either side. No eye candy. No one from Engine Thirty-Seven.

Brooke was annoyed at the way her heart had skipped a beat when the doors whooshed open. She was disappointed at her own disappointment. This little game of Zach roulette did not amuse her. She had a chance at normalcy and predictability and a perfectly nice date with a perfectly nice guy. She should be satisfied. She’d call Tom. Soon.

“I’m going to grab a quick cup of coffee,” she told the nurse.

The emergency two-way radio that resided permanently at the nurses’ station sounded. Another ambulance was on its way. She lingered and listened as the nurse communicated with the crew, until Brooke heard it was not Engine Thirty-Seven.

Impatiently, she pushed through the door into the kitchenette.

There Zach was, standing there as calm as could be, reading the work schedule pinned on the bulletin board. She hadn’t braced herself to see him, so the sight of him took her breath away. His hair, which had darkened to a medium brown over the winter, was once more becoming streaked by the sun now that warm weather had returned to Texas. His jaw was square, clean-shaven, and his uniform—

Zach wasn’t in uniform. Brooke had never seen him in anything but black. Now he wore a pale blue shirt, cuffed halfway up his forearms and tucked into his jeans. His boots were brown, not black, and they were cowboy boots, not steel-toed work boots. He looked about as delicious as a rugged man could look.

Brooke wished, with a sudden ferocity that knocked her off guard, that she could say to hell with logic and predictability and Tom and instead take a chance with Zach. What would it be like to let him make her laugh after hours instead of settling for a quick grin at work? To flirt, to tease, to touch a man without knowing where it would lead or how long it would last?

That would be dangerous living.

He glanced her way to see who had opened the door. When their eyes met, he smiled.

She nodded coolly. “What are you doing here? You’re not...” She gestured toward his jeans. “...working.”

“Looking for you, of course. I hoped you’d be done with your shift, and we could catch that drink.”

“It’s nine in the morning.”

“We could drink coffee.” He stepped closer to her, close enough that she could see how the blue of his shirt made the blue in his eyes more pronounced. Close enough that the quiet bass of his voice filled the air between them. “I know a vintage record store that has a coffee bar. They play heavy metal on vinyl, but they top your lattes with just a whisper of foam. If you were just coming off a hard night shift, it would be a great combination.”

“Oh.”

“I came in and checked the schedule yesterday. I thought you were working overnight and might need to wind down this morning, before going to bed.”

There was practically a purr in his voice. She narrowed her eyes in suspicion. Was he trying to seduce her at nine in the morning? Seduce her with heavy metal music played on vinyl records in one of Austin’s funky coffee shops? The man must not have any sense of what she was like as a person. She wasn’t the kind of woman who drank coffee in places like that.

Maybe I am. I’ve never tried it.

She leaned back against the wall, tucking her hands behind herself, in the small of her back. Away from him. “I switched shifts. I’ve got ten more hours today. I won’t be done until seven, if that.”

His easy grin said it was no big deal, nothing to worry about. He nodded toward the schedule on the wall. Her schedule. He hadn’t left anything to chance, after all.

“I see that. I’m covering a short shift today for a friend in an ambulance company, eleven to six. I can be showered and shaved and ready to take you out tonight when you get off at seven. Say yes.”

She hesitated. As flattering as it was that he’d apparently meant it when he’d said it wasn’t a joke and he really wanted to buy her a drink, he was still that playboy paramedic who flirted shamelessly with everything and everyone female.

She lifted her chin, wishing she weren’t so tempted to add herself to his fan club. “What if I said no?”

His smile didn’t slip, but he looked a little surprised at her question. “I’d be disappointed, but I understand long shifts. If you’re tired, you’re tired. I was matching up our schedules when you came in. I’m starting twenty-four hours tomorrow, but we could make it the day after tomorrow.”

“I meant what’s your plan B for tonight, if I can’t make it?”

He placed one hand on the wall near her head and leaned closer to her. That mostly-blue gaze never left her face. “I’d head over to the firehouse after work. Shower. Crash on the couch in front of some mindless sports.”

“Alone?”

He tilted his head a little to the side, studying her. “Yes, alone. I want to go out with you. If you’re unavailable, I don’t want to go out.”

She snorted a little, not the most ladylike sound, but her disbelief needed an outlet. “Be serious. If I said no, you’d get over that disappointment fast. You could take any other woman out for drinks. You’d have another date lined up before I could snap my fingers.”

He wasn’t smiling now. “Women aren’t interchangeable. If I want to spend time with you, then no one else will do.”

“I’ve watched you flirt with every woman you set eyes on for eight months.”

“That doesn’t mean I date every woman I see. When I’m interested in one woman, then she’s it.”

She did frown at that. “Really? Judging by your behavior around here, it’s been a long time since you decided one woman was enough.”

“I’d say it’s been four years. Almost five.”

That startled Brooke into silence. Such a specific answer—the man had his secrets, then. A past. It was hard to imagine Zach devoted to one woman four years ago.

“Are you divorced?” She felt as if she was venturing way too far into personal territory by asking him that, but wasn’t that information she should know about a man before she dated him?

She glanced at his free hand. No ring, no mark left by a ring. No sign that a woman had ever placed a gold band on that finger, claiming him.

“Never married,” he said curtly. He pushed away from the wall and leaned back against the counter, a casual pose that seemed much more like the Zach she knew. “Do you really think if you aren’t available, then I’m going to step into the hall and ask Mary Ellen instead?”

“Mary Ellen’s engaged.”

Zach’s easygoing smile returned. “Just one more reason I’d rather be with you.”

“What are the other reasons?”

“Spend the evening with me, and I’ll tell you each one.”

Chapter Five

She’d said yes.

Brooke’s shift had started with two hours of misery, thanks to those miserable parents, but after seeing Zach in the break room, she’d been buoyed along by a sense of sweet anticipation, eight pleasant hours so far, all because she’d thrown caution to the wind and said yes.

Maybe she didn’t know herself as well as she’d always thought she did. Or maybe she’d been intrigued by a glimpse of a man who had layers that ran deeper than a handsome face and a quick, laughing wit. Or maybe...

Or maybe, it was just good, old-fashioned physical attraction. Zach had leaned over her, placed his hand on the wall near her head, and her body had responded. She could catalog all the classic signs of arousal. Blood vessels had dilated, breathing had deepened, heart rate had increased.

Incredibly, being around her had produced the same effects in Zach. She’d been staring into his blue-green eyes when she’d realized that his breathing had changed slightly, too. Since Brooke shined a penlight into patients’ eyes all day long, she’d noticed that the pupils of Zach’s eyes widened as she challenged him. That one telltale sign, a pupil dilation indicating an arousal of the autonomic nervous system which no one could fake, had given her more confidence than all the smiles he sent her way. She didn’t trust her own instincts, the ones that said this attractive man found her attractive, too, but she could trust science.

He was into her.

She was smiling at the thought even now. Just two more hours and her shift would end and her date would begin. The anticipation was intoxicating. Brooke bent her head over the patient’s chart and tried not to look as giddy as she felt inside. It was quite the emotional high to have a schoolgirl crush that was actually being returned. Endorphins, dopamine, serotonin.

She liked Zach Bishop, and he liked her back. Why had she fought that so hard? There was nothing bad about a little uptick in endorphins. How could she have so coldly considered choosing to spend her time with Tom Bamber for the sake of predictability?

The desk radio interrupted her thoughts. An ambulance was on its way in, transporting a patient who was already coding. She wiped the grin off her own face, feeling almost ashamed to be happy when others were not. She stuck her hands in the pockets of her white coat and listened while a nurse wrote the information being relayed.

The radio reported a white male, ninety-six years old, was en route. They were bagging him, using a balloon-like device to push air into his lungs. Defibrillation had failed to produce a heartbeat. Manual chest compressions were ongoing, and had been ongoing for the entire thirty-minute ambulance ride in from a distant ranch. Brooke knew they would still be ongoing when they arrived in an estimated ten minutes; the patient was not going to spontaneously recover. Whoever was forcing that heart to squeeze by pushing on the chest would have to keep pushing.

The last of Brooke’s buoyant emotions sank. It was time to do the hard work of her profession.

Ninety-six years old. A total of forty minutes of chest compressions before arrival. No one was immediately declared dead on arrival without every effort first being made, but the checklist of medical options was short in this situation.

Brooke was waiting in the crash room when they arrived. The paramedics told her the patient had been found in his bed when a family member brought his dinner tray to him. The first item on Brooke’s mental checklist was also the last: assess body temperature. The thermometer’s reading was repeated to be completely certain, but she knew any chance of resuscitation was gone. His body had cooled after he’d died in his sleep, peacefully, well before his family had noticed and called the ambulance. Brooke stepped back from the patient and formally announced the time of death.

That wasn’t the hard part of her job. Declaring a patient dead was something she was qualified to do.

But the next logical step was never easy. She had to inform the next of kin that their loved one was gone. Grief was an unpredictable monster, and no matter how she approached a deceased patient’s family, no matter how young or old the patient was, no matter how expected or unexpected the death was, the monster always landed a blow.

Brooke had learned to protect herself from it as much as possible. She always entered a room of waiting family members while wearing her white coat, a symbol of care and competence and authority which Brooke believed was reassuring to the family in a subconscious way. She shook hands, her polite yet serious demeanor generally the first step in preparing the family to hear the news she had to deliver. She did so as simply and concisely as she could, telling them when, and why.

Then the monster had its turn.

Each time, Brooke could only stand by and witness the assault. Whether the monster caused shocked silence or unrestrained wailing, Brooke stayed in the room. Inevitably, there would be additional questions about what had happened, and she was in the best position to explain why the body had failed, why a treatment had or hadn’t been attempted, or anything else the family wanted to know.

As the monster finished its first round of punches, someone would make the emotional request to view the body, or else someone would ask a practical question about funeral arrangements, and then Brooke knew it was time to leave the family in the competent hands of the hospital’s morgue attendants.

With her duty complete, she would return to the nurses’ station, pick up the next chart in sequence, and move on to her next patient. Laceration of the forearm. Evaluation of abdominal pain. More patients needed to be cared for, regardless of Brooke’s personal feelings, so there was no sense in giving in to her emotions. It was a routine she usually handled as well as anyone could.

Today should not have been different.

Brooke informed the family of the ninety-six-year-old patient that their loved one could not be revived. She waited for the first wave of grief to pass, then left the family when the hospital administrator arrived to handle the final arrangements.

It was time to move forward. Yet Brooke stood at the nurses’ station, and wondered why she felt shaky.

“Dr. Brown, can you take room four?” A nurse held out a clipboard, expecting Brooke to take it the way she always, always did.

Today, she hesitated.

Just give me a minute. I need a minute.

“I’ll complete this death certificate first,” Brooke said evenly.

“Oh. Sure.” After a second of hesitation, the nurse set down the clipboard and walked away.

Brooke’s hand felt stiff and ungainly—what on earth is wrong with me?—as she began filling out the form, taking care to keep her writing legible so the admin clerks wouldn’t transcribe any errors into the final legal document.

This death should not have been a difficult one, as these things went. The patient had lived a longer life than most people. His death had been painless, at home, and he’d clearly lived his last days surrounded by people who cared about him.

But today, Brooke was off balance. She’d made plans for tonight that were out of character. Her emotions weren’t entirely under control, so the monster had grazed her as it hit the patient’s family.

I wish Zach would walk in the door.

For one second, just one second, Brooke let herself imagine a man dressed in black, bigger and stronger than she was, ready to shoulder her worries and cares.

What a foolish thought. If anything, Zach was to blame for her sudden inability to handle the hardest part of her job. Because she’d felt this morning’s endorphin-fueled rush of attraction, this afternoon’s death seemed all the darker in contrast.

She’d failed to protect her emotional stability. She wasn’t usually incapacitated by grief, because she wasn’t usually extraordinarily happy, either. She should never have agreed to start seeing a man who affected her like Zach did.

She could fix that now. She could cancel her date with Zach. She could return Tom Bamber’s call.

She should use her head, not her heart. Or rather, she should use her head, and not her hormones. Her attraction to Zach was purely physical, surely.

Then surely it’s okay to go ahead and see him tonight. There’s no emotional attachment. It’s just physical chemistry. A little flirting with the biggest flirt of them all.

That was perfectly sensible, but her attraction to Zach didn’t feel purely physical. Her emotions were all stirred up every time she was near him, and that was unacceptable.

She looked at the clock. Six thirty. His shift had ended thirty minutes ago; hers had thirty minutes left. There was plenty of time to change plans. They’d exchanged phone numbers this morning. She should call him and cancel, for her own peace of mind. She could pack all her emotions, the good and the bad, into the neat little compartments in her head where they belonged, if she stopped anticipating time with Zach.

The door to the waiting room opened. Not the door to the large waiting room, which had check-in desks and televisions and children’s play areas. This was the door to the smaller waiting area, the one with four walls and soothing artwork and privacy, the one where the staff put the families of patients who were critical and might not survive.

The family of the deceased ninety-six-year-old began filing out. They’d followed the ambulance here in what must have been a small convoy of cars. Brooke had been surprised at the large cluster of adult children she’d had to shake hands with when she’d gone in to break the news. Now they were milling about, discussing who should leave, who would stay until the funeral parlor arrived, who needed coffee and where was the cafeteria, and had Bob had a chance to view the body yet? A broken little family, pulling itself back together, getting reorganized as families do.

Brooke kept her head down. She wrote faster, but she still heard the young girl’s voice. “Do I get to see Grandpa now?”

None of the adults seemed to have heard her. When Brooke had broken the news, that girl had been in the waiting room, too, a lovely young person on the threshold of adolescence, with braces on her teeth and shiny long hair.

“Aunt Lucy?” the girl asked, trying again. “Can I go and see Grandpa with you?”

Brooke wished now she’d shaken the girl’s hand as if she were one of the adults. She feels the loss, too. She’s grieving, too. Pay attention to her!

The girl looked perhaps eleven or twelve years old, but that was old enough to understand and feel everything that was going on. Brooke knew, because that was how old she’d been when her four-year-old sister had died.

The monster hit her hard.

With her pen frozen over the paper, Brooke sucked in her breath at the sudden blow. It had been lurking, she realized, since this morning’s four-year-old patient with the parents who didn’t know how fortunate they were to have a little girl with a common cold.

The aunt patted the preteen on the shoulder almost absentmindedly, but she did answer her. “We’ll say goodbye to Grandpa at the funeral parlor, honey.”

The girl’s family cared for her. Of course they did, just as Brooke’s family had cared for her. Still, she’d been lost after her sister’s death. Watching this little drama in the hall, she could see how easily an older child could be overlooked. When her sister had died, Brooke hadn’t been young enough to require the attention of being fed and dressed and provided for, but neither had she been old enough to be included while the adults in her family had made funeral arrangements and tried to console her nearly incoherent parents.

Brooke’s almost twenty-year-old memories suddenly weren’t old enough. She felt the pain of her sister’s death, a horrible contrast to the pleasure of thinking about Zach.

Zach.

Had she really been blaming him for letting the genie out of the bottle? Her emotions weren’t out of control because she’d said yes to him. They were out of control because a four-year-old little girl had stirred up painful memories this morning, and this afternoon’s death had made them boil over.

She looked at the clock again. It was six forty-five. Unless she texted him that she needed more time, Zach would pick her up at her apartment at seven thirty. She’d given him the address.

Loretta walked up to her. “Can you start one last patient? It’s a straightforward laceration. Shouldn’t take too long.”

A straightforward case would still keep her here another hour. Loretta was asking because Brooke always said yes. All of the doctors, not just Brooke, routinely worked past the end of their shifts. It was the nature of a medical career. Zach would understand. He might not have ended his shift on time, either. She’d text him and push back their date by another hour.

She glanced at the family down the hall. The girl turned away from the cluster of adults. She poked listlessly at a poster on the wall.

Suddenly, an hour seemed like an eternity to Brooke. She wanted, very badly, to see the man who made her smile against her will with his corny lines. She wanted to be with a man who had confidence, who lived life with a bit of swagger. He’d buy her a drink, she’d soak up his casual charisma and life would be no big deal, nothing to worry about.

“No, I can’t start a new patient now.” Brooke dashed her signature hastily on the bottom of the death certificate and slapped it, facedown, in the nurse’s in-box.

“Are you okay, Dr. Brown?” Loretta was watching her with concern.

“I’m fine. It’s been a long shift, so I’m determined to leave on time for once.”

The grieving family was breaking up, a few going back into the waiting room, most of them, including the girl, leaving through the door to the parking lot.

Loretta looked in the same direction Brooke was looking. “That was a nice family, wasn’t it? Listen, I saw Dr. Gregory come in, and MacDowell’s here. You can go on and leave a little early. I’ll let them know.” Loretta patted her shoulder, a maternal move that surprised Brooke into taking a step back.

“Yes, I’ll see you next time.” She walked quickly toward the kitchen, unbuttoning her white coat as she went. She stuffed it into the next laundry bin she passed, grabbed her purse from the locker and headed for the physician’s parking lot at the same pace she usually reserved for heading to the crash room.

She wanted to see Zach. Zach had held Harold Allman’s hand and kept the pain from overwhelming him. She wanted, more than anything, for Zach to hold her hand, too.

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